


Orisons

by Mrinalinee



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Unintentional Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrinalinee/pseuds/Mrinalinee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Destiny is not the whole of one's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orisons

**Author's Note:**

> Set mid S-4. Originally written for the fuckyeahmerlinfemslash exchange on tumblr. Thanks, as usual, to Mei for beta-ing.

**Prologue**

She would have ridden, or strode freely across the land, but she walked now as an aged woman, heavy and leaning with age, and went unnoticed and untroubled until she wished trouble on herself- as sometimes she did. When she slept, the trouble that she carried with her did not, and tugged at her dress and hood, urging her to wake and travel further. I go where I wish, she told herself fiercely, and - restrain yourself, as she might have told Arthur centuries ago, before she realized what he was.

She continued.

The way was easy on the feet and heart. She had left behind no word to Agravaine and wondered what he might be thinking; she imagined him standing lost in her hovel, perhaps for days, and the thought gave her a light by which she continued on her course.

She wished, sometimes, that she might ride, thundering, her sword sheathed at her side, but she was past that life, and would be past, even when she became queen and might do as she wished.

When she arrived - where she arrived - the trees were a dense tangle, and the wish for a sword came again, thrummingly. Dripping from the trees. melting from the bark and branches, came forms - human but for the greenness of them, the oddness and age. She threw off her disguise, and faced them, tall. She was not stupid Uther; she feared no magic.

“Friends,” she said. “I haven’t come for you, but I mean you no harm. I can help you. When I am queen of Camelot, I will make it safe again for people like us. Stand aside, and let me pass.”  
They advanced.

“But I will fight, if I must,” she said. “I am more powerful than you can imagine.”

They did not stop, and she wished, now, for an axe, something to scare them properly, and brought down fire on them.

It had no effect, nor did the wind and rain she threw upon them, and they came at her, brandishing their staves, and she could feel the strength of their magic on her like a threat.

They walked slow and shambling but inexorable, impenetrable. In a hazy panic, she cast a glamor on herself and slid among them as one of them. They turned, but she had performed her magic well, and they couldn’t find her. She would just slip past them, and then she could outrun them, and not look back.

And then a woman stepped out from behind the trees.

\--

“Did Morgause never speak of me?” said Nimueh.

“No,” said Morgana, although her heart had startled when she heard the name.

“I am the Lady of the Lake. We met before, obliquely. You met my Afanc.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that you’re the Lady of the Lake?” sneered Morgana.

“Why wouldn’t you?” said Nimeh, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“I remember the Afanc. Why would you poison your own water?”

“What wound is more grievous than the one received?” said Nimueh, which sounded like top-grade horseshit to Morgana. “You have much to learn. I can teach you.”

“I have been taught everything I need to know,” said Morgana, expecting to be told that this was evidence she didn’t know anything at all.

Nimueh just shrugged. “Very well. I won’t try to persuade you.” She leaned in. “Tell me about your revenge on Uther. I have waited for this. I mourned the missed opportunity, but yours was a sweeter one than any I could have exacted.”

“I will not rest until Arthur is dead and I am on the throne of Camelot.”

“Was that Morgause’s plan?” said Nimueh, and frowned. “And you have no loyalty to Arthur? He is your brother.”

“He is no brother of mine,” said Morgana. “And my loyalty is to those who were taken from me.”

Nimueh didn’t bother to demur. “Did Morgause never speak of your mother?”

Morgana said, restless, impatient, “I have no wish to speak of Morgause. Why did you bring me here, other than to bore me with endless talk?”

“A pity,” said Nimueh, placid. “She was powerful, but she died in childbed.. I have grown a fondness for the boy Arthur. I was fond of his mother.” Her brow furrowed momentarily. “A sacrifice is a sacrifice.” Morgana stared at her. “Be patient, child. Our goals are the same.”

“I need no help,” said Morgana.

“Ah, you have Agravaine. Useless Agravaine,” and Morgana gave a little start of delight.

She said merely, “He serves his purpose.”

“Barely. You have more power than Morgause realized. I know what to do with it. What have you to do now that your revenge is complete? What will you do on the throne of Camelot?”

“It is mine,” snarled Morgana.

“It is not. Your throne, from a father you deny? Can you not tell the difference between visions and delusions? You will never be queen in Camelot.”

“I will be queen,” said Morgana. “I won’t listen to your poison. You brought me here for this? I should kill you.”

“You might try,” said Nimueh, amused. “I am old, child. So old that the years I have waited have passed like drops of rain. No, I brought you here to retrieve something precious to me.”  
“I won’t give in to your insult.”

“I’m no Morgause, Morgana. My respect you will have to earn. But earn it you will.”

“I have no interest in gaining your respect,” said Morgana in disgust, turning away finally.

\--

Agravaine was not waiting for her when she returned, and she was a little disappointed that he had not hung on every moment that she was gone, but pleased that she would not have to see him so soon; she was tired, and irritable.

“Where did you go?” he asked when he came to her, a few days later.

“I am not answerable to you,” she said, and walked away from him.

To her dismay, he followed her. “Our plans might have come to nothing.”

“I hope worrying gave you an ulcer,” she told him.

\--

She lived in a hovel, which was unsalvagable, and she usually didn’t bother to put in order, but now she began to take the time to put it to rights. She had a natural inclination for magic, but she began to practice, just the basic spells that Morgause had first taught, improving her timing and accuracy. She took long walks, going nowhere in particular, and did her best to avoid Agravaine, even though she knew he was only coming to report news.

One day, she went to her well, and found Nimueh standing in the water.

“You might as well listen to me,” she said. “I’ve already contaminated your water.”

“I can fix that if I must,” said Morgana. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

“It’s the Cup of Life,” said Nimueh, behind her. She turned around.

\--

She kept close to rivers and streams, out of common sense, and attributed that to the sense of comfort the water gave her. Inevitably, she ran across towns and villages, but she avoided them in favor of striding cleanly across the parcelled, bounded land, free of the broken gait she had adopted on her trip to Nimueh’s island. She had always hated the necessities that living in a hovel forced her to, but they were useful in the first quiet months of her journey. Once or twice she thought she saw a girl’s face, younger than Nimueh’s, peering at her from the water.  
But the land thinned, and grew poorer, and winter began to set in, and she became forced to take shelter in the villages she had avoided. Everywhere, she heard whispers of Uther, and Arthur - although she thought perhaps she was beyond Camelot. She must be a witch, still fleeing, she heard, and told herself she was not listening. She didn’t care.

She heard nothing of Emrys, nor of Lady Morgana Pendragon.

The first night, she lay under the roof and felt the anger uncurl up in her. She did not want to be here, in this poor house, among these villagers. She couldn’t sleep.

The morning came, and the family gathered around her to say goodbye, and she thought, _I could burn this house down with you inside_. Stiffly, she said, “Thank you.”

But the land grew thinner and frailer, infertile in the best times, and the time came when she should have stopped and taken refuge for the winter, and she continued to travel, until she began to feel she longer could. Hunger clawed at her, but the thirst was worse, constant. No snow fell, although the sky remained gray, only a poor frost spread across the ground, making it impossible to dig for water. She licked the frost from the earth, and from the poor, thin twigs, too fine to make a fire. She walked a little each day, as far as she could, but her eyes were great staring things, and she could not walk but stutter across the frozen ground, for the thirst kept her awake, or with stark, staring nightmares. She wished for a village, and thought disgustedly, I have killed villagers like that. She began wonder, through a haze, if they had feared and hated Uther as she had, if they had waited, as she had, for the day that his oppressive rule was over and magic came again to Camelot. She was torn apart, by the cold and by her own, violent mind, which cast these thoughts on her when she had neither the strength nor resolve to fight them, and she hated it and herself, knowing that had she been stronger, she would have chased them away.

On perhaps the fifth day of this, or perhaps only the second or third, she came at last upon a stream, and a few stunted trees and broke through the crust of ice to find flowing water. The water was bitter in her hands but only cool and clean in her mouth, without grit and warmed her entirely; and the bark that she tore from the trees sustained her as the finest meats in Camelot never had. She built a fire at last, a poor guttering thing, and when she came to herself at last, she realized that this aching land was one of magic, banded all around with magic.

She walked with more purpose after that, carrying her water skin and chips of bark, but she suffered little hunger and thirst and the way was easy once again to her. The magic in the land was a capricious one, one moment gently pulling to her own, the other lashing her inside and out, but she was no longer afraid and called to it with songs of her own, inviting it in.

She found that trees began to crop up again, and finally she was in the forest as she was before, but with magic still tugging at her hands and feet, unwilling to let her go. When she came upon the next village, the villagers greeted her with no suspicion and their hearth was warm and inviting, the anger banked down in her. They didn’t whisper of witches, but asked open, and although there was little enough to share in the winter, and they were reluctant to give and they resented her for coming, there was no malice in their questions.

“Thank you,” she said, when she left, accepting loaves of bread and ropes of salted meat, but she still lacked hunger and thirst, as she had in the magic land. She was tired, more often than not, and slowed. Her arms and legs itched constantly, and she tore gashes in them, gashes that wept and bled and stuck to her clothes.

\--

She walked until spring came again, and in a clearing spongy with rain, found herself stopped and surrounded. .

“Morgana le Fay,” said the leader of the Druids. “We have been waiting.”

She had no eyes for them, though.  
“Mordred?” she said.

“He is not with us now.” The Druid turned gentle eyes on her, and the devastation plunged in her belly. “But now. You have travelled a year and a day, and you must be weary. Take your rest with us. You will be safe. We have what it is you seek.”

She allowed herself to be led in.

\--

They did not tell her where he was in the days following, and at her insistence, repeated gently that he was no longer with them. They gave her a bedroll to sleep on, and she found it more comfortable than any she had slept on before. They did not allow her to eat from the communal pot, but gave her her food in a small plate, and though she was not hungry, she bristled. There was always plenty of water in her tent, and she found that she was in no hurry to leave, that she was calm and comfortable.

When she finally made to leave, she found her pack had been replaced with a larger, sturdier one, with thick and clean blankets, with food. No one was around when she left the camp, and she was glad of it.

She walked for a few days, carefully rationing her food. She had not been hungry with the Druids, and was not hungry now. She was disappointed to find that the days of rest had not invigorated her, and that she was tired still, tense and tired.

She looked up to see a dragon, wheeling in the sky. She watched it for a few minutes, its impressive arcs and rolls, and when she came out of the woods, it alighted before her.

“Witch,” it greeted her.

“Dragon,” she said, stubbornly refusing to be awed.

“I have come against my will to bear you on your return to Nimueh. Why she demands it, I could not say. Perhaps she does not trust you,” it says.

“As I don’t trust you.”

“Trust me, don’t trust me. You only make it easier for me, Witch.”

\--

Riding a dragon was not comfortable; the scaly skin stuck to her clothes. Both she and the dragon abstained from talking; she suspected insolence but was too happy with the arrangement to complain. Sometimes she thought she would be better off walking, but then she looked down, saw the tiny patterns of landscapes, and lost her breath.

\--

“Old friend,” said Nimueh, when they landed.

“He’s no friend of mine,” spat Morgana.

“Indeed, I am not, little witch.”

“He is not,” said Nimueh. “But he is bound to me.”

“Rail against them as you will, the chains of the Old Religion are not so easy to break. Do not call on me for so trivial an errand again, Lady.”

“I will do as I please,” said Nimueh.

\--

“You will never be so humbled again,” said Morgana.

“No,” said Nimueh.

 

**Part 1**

 

She has returned again to the deathplace of Morgause. She picks her way across the scattered ground. The rocks seem to her more tumbled than previously, the ruins no longer picturesque, even that falling to ruin. In such a short while, she marvels.

She turns to Nimueh. “Where do I start?” receiving for her trouble:

“With silence.”

She would stamp her foot, childlike. “No. I will no longer be silent.”

Nimueh shrugs. “As you wish,” she says, careless.

She leads Morgana through the shattered stone, and sits. Even though she is witnessing it, Morgana cannot imagine her seated.

She sits.

“Morgause taught you to harness your own power, which will never match Merlin’s - ”

“Merlin’s?” And though her stomach flares with anger at the revelation, there is anger there too, of a different sort. “Not as strong? How dare you?”

“You may interrupt as you will because I am no tyrant, but know this, Morgana: I do not tolerate your interruptions lightly.”

“I have no use for a tutor,” says Morgana. Without Morgause, she has allowed herself to depend on her own magic, but she doesn’t love it, for every use reminds her of her loss. Sometimes, in the night, when exhaustion drains her of her anger, she feels the tight webbing of grief draw across her. And worse - sometimes she marvels at magic, not as the means by which she will seize the throne, or for its own self, but for its ease, its convenience; and she is ashamed and angry for thinking anything good could come of Morgause’s death.

“Fine. Return to your squalor.”

“I will not live in squalor for long.”

“Then go.”

She stands up.

\--

She sleeps, the first night, on bedrock. She rips layers from her skirts and settles them in a pillow. and her own blankets for blankets. She has slept in places, if not worse, then equally bad, and although she has never learned untortured sleep, her body has learned without her help to take its refreshment where it can.

“Did you spy on me?” asks Morgana, the remembrance bringing bile stinging to her throat.

“Your movements do not fascinate me as you think, Morgana.”

“You’re lying. In the water - I saw a face.”

“Ah. In the old days, I had hundreds, thousands , who offered themselves in service to me. In their absence, I have Freya. If she watched you, it was without my knowledge.” Morgana feels it prick up suddenly, the ache in her bones that will not leave, even with rest, the new pains, in her stomach and back, that multiply each day.

“She need not have worried,” says Morgana, injecting acid into her tone.

“I cannot help that.” Nimueh doesn’t quite throw her head back, but sings a note of some soundless music, and a girl emerges, not immediately, from the lake; and indeed, Morgana has seen her face before.

“I’m Freya,” the girl says, and then, frowning, “I don’t _serve_ Nimueh, exactly. I’m training up as her replacement, sort of thing.”

“The Lady of the Lake is old, but yet mutable,” says Nimueh calmly.

Morgana has more important things on her mind. “And you spied on me.”

“I thought to provide you comfort,” Freya says. “I know what it is to be alone.”

“I need no one’s comfort,” says Morgana. “And don’t presume you know anything about me.”

“I don’t,” says Freya.

\--

“Why her?” Morgana demands privately.

“Why her and not you, you mean?”

Morgana narrows her eyes. “I have no wish to be your replacement.”

“You Pendragons have never had a sense for what is necessary.” Before Morgana can cut in, she continues, “And I’ve come to like her presence.” She looks Morgana up and down. “As I will yours, I suppose,” and through her anger, Morgana feels crunched somehow, diminished.

\--

She learned magic through Morgause’s patient hands and Cenred’s snapping, but she who has always longed to be away from walls and confinements, misses the tender flapping of books, the dusty, dreaded corners of Geoffrey’s library; and she is so far now from the great hub of Camelot, far even from its spokes.

“I will live in town,” she tells Nimueh.

“Yes,” says Nimueh, and Morgana, who was expecting refusal and insults, is silent. “The things you need for your study should arrive by year-end.”

“My study?”

“I presume you know Latin and Greek?”

“Latin, and some Greek,” says Morgana, too surprised at the turn of the conversation to snap, but shame-faced still at her lack of knowledge.

“You will have to learn, and more besides,” says Nimueh. “You are far enough from Camelot that the study of magic will go unremarked, even invited.”

“There was no room for study in Camelot,” says Morgana. “They liked their women educated enough, but not enough to argue.”

“That is not your concern now,” says Nimueh.

\--

But the sun is low when she goes into town, the village folding in on itself. She elicits only a few sliding glances, but she keeps her eyes straight and walks straight, to the well at the center, which provokes a somewhat more substantial reaction.

One woman places her kindling on the ground and comes forward.

“Please, my lady, my father is very sick,” she says. “You may stay with me as long as you like if -”

“I have no healing magic,” says Morgana.

“No.” The woman meets her eyes, as if hoping that Morgana will divine her meaning there.

“ _What?_ ” she snaps. But still the woman does not speak.

She guesses, “A gentler death, perhaps.” And there she sees it, the slight lowering of the eyelids in confirmation.

“Yes,” Morgana says.

\--

She wakes only a little later than dawn, alone on the clean floor of the cottage, with the tunnelling breaths of Ruth’s father echoing in walls of the room. Ruth has left bread for her and cheese, but no meat, and she devours it before making her way out of the door and the village. No one questions her movements, but they are a little more easy in the morning, watching her cautiously but without shame.

\--

“From the hills the Old Religion will come, tumbling back into Camelot,” said Nimueh.

“When I am - “

“When you are not Queen.”

“I will be Queen,” Morgana insisted.

“You will not,” said Nimueh flatly.

\--

She sits upon the ground and Nimueh, as before, on a fallen rock.

“Let us have the first lesson, then,” she says.

“The first lesson,” says Nimueh.

\--

She unwraps her bundle of possessions, dented metal pot and wooden spoon, a skin and assorted blanket-like cloths, the long empty vial of comfrey.

Her second night with Morgause, she wished for Gaius’s tonic and, aching, for her horse and bed.

“Do you want for something, here?” asked Morgause, and when she explained, “Do you think your nerves need calming?” and put her hand over Morgana’s.

\--

She imagines the world as a great ball, suspended in empty space, a closed fist. She imagines the crumbling sheets of land crushed together, and scattered. She has no connection to the earth.

They burn Ruth’s father’s body within the fortnight, clustering around the pyre on the outskirts of the village. Morgana knows no one’s name but Ruth’s, and she has no intention of joining the crowd, but ,strange as her ways must be to them (and she has nothing to answer for, not to villagers), they seem to expect that she will; and Ruth takes her hand. She tugs away, but walks by Ruth’s side, silently. They stay until the last flickering tongue burns down, and the arches of Morgana’s feet ache. She shifts her weight, then shifts again, looks around surreptitiously.

“You have been a great comfort to me,” says Ruth.

“I did nothing,” says Morgana.

\--

“Lesson two,” says Nimueh.

The peddlar is a man of scholarly turnings, and from the bottom of his cart, he unearths a book of anatomy and geometry, and one of philosophy, and a sheaf of maps. She rubs her fingers over the grainy, shinied leather, and flips the pages warily, breaking off a pinch of corners before approaching with more caution.

He returns monthly, he tells her, and leaves the books and papers in her hands.

\--

“Tell me about Arthur,” said Freya.

“He sits on the throne that - “

“Is not yours,” interposed Nimueh, helpfully.

Freya laughed. “I’m not interested in all that. Tell me what he’s like as a person.”

“He is - “ Morgana casts around. “He’s a person. And just like his father. If he had found out about my magic -.” She throws her eyes on the ground.

“You can tell me later. Tell me about Merlin. How’s Merlin - ?”

Now she was on firmer ground. “Poisoner, traitor - “

“Not Merlin.”

“Oh indeed,” interrupted Nimueh. “He tried to kill me.”

“Well, you must have given him reason.”

“Only that he asked a life from the balance of the world, and offered one in return, and did not wish to uphold his end of the bargain.”

“And will you kill him?” said Morgana

“Why? He brought no harm to me.”

“How can you say that? You wished revenge on Uther.”

“I go as the ages go,” said Nimueh. “But I will not see my people suffer. See them stunted, scattered. Do you not realize the fissure that Uther has caused in the balance of the world? The turn he has brought upon it, the evil he has turned the minds of men and magic users to? The Old Magic is powerful, but it does not go uncolored by the taint of the world.”

“I have seen it,” said Morgana.

“And the life?” said Freya.

“The Old Magic goes where it wills. As you might,” turning to Morgana. “When you are not bound to Camelot.”

\--

She has no skill with the loom, having abandoned it as soon as Gwen came to her service. She is sure she can plow, and harvest; but Ruth encourages to take over her own small vegetable patch and the care of the chickens, so that she might sell their eggs at market.

“You could maid in one of the bigger towns,” she suggests.

“ _No_ ,” says Morgana.

Ruth embroiders linens, fine stuff that Morgana might have bought at market in Camelot. She learns that she might have; Ruth has an arrangement with the peddler who takes her cloths to market in bigger cities and returns with her money and better material than she can make here or buy. She keeps the money aside, for a hard winter, or some disaster in the village that might require it and works in the fields whenever she has a spare minute.

“But you trust him?” asks Morgana.

“He’s my cousin,” says Ruth.

\--

Freya teaches her herb and root magic, the properties and derivatives of plants. She does not dig her fingers in the dirt, the musty earth, but watches Morgana. Freya’s fingers remain clean.

\--

“But do you not hate him?” The air on the island is always a fine sort of mist, whatever the weather was like when she left the village. She wonders, vaguely, uselessly, about her hair, and thinks, she should have been able to see it in the water.

“He defied me. And turned his back on our people. I have no fondness for the boy. If I might cause him pain, I will, with pleasure. But I will find my way to him yet.” She closes her eyes and says, with some difficulty. “I am but the artery through which the Old Magic flows.”

“That explains nothing,” says Morgana.

“It explains everything,” says Nimueh.

\--

Morgana spends her nights outside in silent study, winding and unwinding her thin hair about her fingers. She does not want to wake in the morning; she dislikes the chickens and the sharp dirt under her fingernails. Her stomach is subject still to stabbing pains and she becomes immediately queasy when she eats any but the blandest food; her shins subject to shooting pains. She knows that she cannot maintain her pattern of study and keeping chickens and garden, and the thought saddens her.

“And the books you have acquired?” says Nimueh.

“I’ve asked for anything of magic, natural philosophy, tactics, mathematics, and the magic of Ind and east of that,” she says, “And a book of poetry.”

Nimueh narrows her eyes. “You are not here for your enjoyment.”

-

“Give me your hand,” says Nimueh, and Morgana does, then thinks, I should not trust her.

And she shouldn’t - a gash of magic slices her palm open. Her blood drips into the crude cistern between the rocks. She watches her blue-green veins, and the open, gaping cut, her blood dissipating in the water.

“You have committed your body to the earth,” says Nimueh, sounding almost regretful.

“The earth?” says Morgana. Absently, she wipes her hand on her dress.

It’s not until a few weeks later that she notices the fine, faint pattern of red weaving up her skirts, a purpling sheen when she moves. Every time she thinks to look again, it has grown again.

\--

The neighboring village, whose lands border their own, struggle with crops in patches.

“Can you not do something?” asks Ruth.

“We cannot change the ways of nature,” says Morgana.

\--

She and Ruth live around each other, not together. They take turns on the bed, and sometimes Morgana returns to cottage to find her blankets neatly rolled and bristles. She wakes in the morning to find Ruth already embroidering and leaves without saying goodbye, most days.

One of the chickens stops laying, and after a long period of wavering, Ruth decides to cook her for dinner. The meat is old, stringy. “Will you grind the bone for the garden, Morgana?” she says, and Morgana rifles a look at her, but she continues sweeping the floor without glancing up.

After that, she switches between “my lady” and “Morgana” almost weekly.

\--

“This is useless,” says Morgana. “I am gaining nothing but arcane knowledge of a lost system that will never return.”

“How dare you,” says Nimueh, mimicking.

“The old magic is still alive, Morgana,” says Freya. “It’s just - it’s just taken a different form.”

\--

It comes out so small that afterwards Morgana cannot even remember how it came about.

“Emrys,” says Nimueh.

“You know him?”

“That’s Merlin’s Druid name,” says Freya, innocuously.

Immediately, the water level rises.

“I’ll kill him!” cries Morgana, going for it. The stone buckles but does not break, nor can she break the wall of water. “He killed my sister! And you - !”

“Morgana,” says Nimueh. Her hand is gentle on Morgana’s hair. “I do not deny you your wish for revenge, but you will not defeat Merlin. You must know that. And I will not have you killed.”

And, wryly, “You are too great an asset to me.”

“I have no wish to see the future,” says Morgana.

“But it is yours.”

“Nothing is mine,” she sobs.

Nimueh stands up. “Let me teach you to make it yours.”

\--

The culprit turns out to be not nature at all, but a villager who was salting the crops, hoping to drive prices up. Ruth returns from the hanging steely-eyed.

“I can remove the salt from the earth,” offers Morgana.

“Does that not interfere with the ways of nature?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“He begged to be _forgiven_ ,” says Ruth.

\--

“I am not slave to the Old Religion,” says Morgana.

Nimueh is uncharacteristically silent.

“I am not slave to anything.”

Nimueh keeps looking.

\--

_”Mordred,” she shouted, but he was lost to the wave of battle and could not hear her. She had no sword in her hands, and stood on the sidelines, her hair pulling in the wind._

_The dream shuddered, then, and she sat by the side of Freya’s lake, with Arthur._

_“Old friend,” she said._

_“Morgana.” He twisted his neck to look her in the eye. “I might have wished for a more beautiful face to ease my passing.”_

_She scoffed. “You might have saved your wishes for a more beautiful face for yourself.” His hand came to rest on hers, and he twisted again. She pushed him flat. “Even in death, I see you have no consideration for others. Must you ruin my dress?”_

_“And you haven’t changed either, still more worried about your clothes than the dying. Morgana - Excalibur must not stay here.”_

_“I will take it.”_

_“I know you will. And after my death use it to lead the charge against Camelot.”_

_She smiled. “Faithless.”_

_“Not at all,” he said. “I have every faith that you will always scheme against me.”_

_She said, “We’re not children anymore, Arthur. I have no use for your cast-offs,” and tried to rearrange him again._

_“Will you be still and allow me to derive what comfort I can in your bony lap?”_

_“A lap that I may remind you, you and all the nobles of Albion schemed to get into once.”_

_“My God,” he exclaimed. “I would anything but to go to my death listening to your idle chatter.”_

_“You’ll listen to my idle chatter and like it,” she said severely. He twisted his body once more, and she felt his other hand on her forearm._

_Later she stood on the edge of the lake, the sword in hand. She stared at it for a long while, and heaved it into the water, watched it, spinning, fall away from her._

_She saw Freya’s hand plunge from the water, and tilt in greeting, and she raised her own hand in acknowledgment before she turned, tearless, from the water._

\--

“You know how it ends,” she says to Nimueh. “Is it my destiny to always be watching?”

“Your destiny.” Nimueh speaks like she is savoring the words. “Did you think you would not betray Morgause, too? Treachery is in your blood, as it was in your father’s.”

“Morgause - “

“Your destiny,” she repeats. “Do you think they think of you? Do you think you inhabit every waking thought as they do yours? They barely think of you at all.”

\--

“I know how scary it must be, to see the future,” says Freya. She whistles lightly and fish glimmer and glide under the surface, arranging themselves in dance.

“Not scary,” Morgana says. “Not really. Empty.”

“Nothing is empty.” Morgana can think of many empty things, and does. Freya dangles her fingers in the water. “Nothing is.”

\--

 

“Then why am I here?” she demands.

Nimueh just laughs.

\--

“Destiny,” muses Freya.

“What do you know of destiny?” says Morgana.

“I’m the up-and-coming young Lady of the Lake,” Freya crows, opening her eyes wide. “I’m confined to the water. I mean, I also - . I think, destiny is not the whole of your life.”

\--

They have no healer in the village, but there is one in a village a league away, a dealer in tonics and potions and practitioner of small magics.

She does not apologize to him when people start travelling from his village, and the surrounding villages, to see her, but her skin prickles with a mix of pride and guilt.

The earthy smell lingers. Morgana believes in the permanence of the stains on her skin. She brews potions for cough and headache, splints bones and binds gashes, using the feeling movement of her magic to nudge the bones into place.

\--

Morgana pulls her hair back and begins to set the boy’s leg without assurance. His parents are paying, and that’s what matters, but she watches the contortions of the boy’s face and tells herself that she’ll give him a draught for the pain, free of charge. It’s the least I can do, she thinks.

When she looks up, Ruth is watching her.

“ _What?_ ” she says.

Ruth averts her eyes. “Nothing.”

“I won’t be lied to,” says Morgana. “I’ve been lied to enough.”

“What about Tom?” Ruth gestures to the boy, and sighs when Morgana makes no effort to resume her work.. “I was just thinking - . I just -.” She rubs the back of her neck. “When you pulled your hair back -. You must have been a great beauty. I didn’t realize before.”

\--

She stops in the middle of her lesson, and her untrustworthy mind has kept numbering them long after Nimueh stopped finding it funny.

Nimueh sighs, taps her foot. “What do you want, Morgana?” She puts a hand to Morgana’s hair.

“What do you want from me?” asks Morgana, helpless, as if for the first time.

\--

She sweeps the floor, clumsy, awkward, with no mastery of the movement of wrist or elbow. The cottage is heavy with the smell of baking bread. Ruth is cooking dinner.

“I don’t know how you lived with your cooking for so long,” she says.

“I did what I had to to survive,” says Morgana, stiff. She unbends. “I ate it too hot to taste.”

“Oh, is _that_ the trick?”

“You, however, grew up cooking. What’s your excuse?”

“You’ve destroyed your taste with your cooking,” says Ruth, lofty.

“And for that, I’m thankful.” They continue silently for a few minutes. Then Morgana says, “How did you come to do your embroidering?”

Ruth blinks. “John’s father was a peddlar too. He always brought us good things, fine things. I went with them once to the cities, as a child. I - “

\--

Nimueh teaches her to tap the rumbling magic beneath the earth, the ebb and flow of magic with turning of the tides.

“I enjoyed this lesson,” says Morgana, and Nimueh glares. “Thank you.”

Nimueh says ungrudgingly, “You are learning quickly. And well. I would not let you stay, else.”

\--

“Tell me about the Queen,” says Freya.

“The Queen?” says Morgana, shocked. Freya waits. “The _Queen_ was my servant.”

“Oh, how things change,” intones Freya.

“It is of no import now,” says Morgana, after a pause. “I can never love her again. I will never be queen of Camelot.”

\--

“Morgause was a fool,” says Nimueh. “She was blinded by her love for you.”

“You know nothing of Morgause,” says Morgana, but tired.

“I raised her from a child.”

“You know nothing,” says Morgana.

Nimueh studies her, tips her fingers under the hinge of Morgana’s jaw and tilts up. “I am not so blinded.”

\--

“She gave me my first blade,” says Morgana. “Well. Arthur commissioned it, but the design was hers. Hers and her father’s.”

“Was it beautiful?” says Freya, sympathetically.

“I had forgotten about it.” Perhaps it’s just that her possessions are now so limited, and she so aware of their scarcity. Once Morgause’s bracelet had been all that she needed, and so much a part of her that she barely remembered its existence, but now she is conscious of it at every moment, conscious of every removal and replacement.

\--

She wakes from a troubled sleep, and muddy, sees Nimueh watching her.

“I will not allow harm to come to you,” Nimueh says.

\--

“I am glad that you have learned healing magic,” says Ruth.

Morgana thinks of Gaius’s workshop, of Merlin in Gauis’s workshop. “I did not do it for you,” she retorts. “Or any other of the _villagers_.

“No, you would not do anything for any but yourself,” says Ruth.

In the evening, Morgana returns to the hearth. “I am sorry,” she says.

“You are right to be,” says Ruth, and Morgana is surprised to find that she is not angry at Ruth’s graceless acceptance.

\--

Morgana says, “Nor I to you,” as if she has said it before, and leans up and kisses Nimueh, kisses her on the mouth.

\--

Morgana says, “You know, you don’t need to keep everyone else away just for me.”

“Oh!” says Ruth, surprised. “Do you miss them?”

“I don’t - ,” starts Morgana. “I thought -.”

“Oh,” says Ruth, shuttling her hands. “I don’t - .”

\--

“Have you thought of how absurd this is? Great Lady of the Lake, snogging her pupils on a bed of stone?”

“Morgana,” says Nimueh, warning.

“It’s good that you take such an _interest_ in your people.”

“You must not question the ways of nature,” says Nimueh. Morgana tries to decipher her tone, but thinks instead of one of her books and its preoccupation with the exact nature of ritual magic sex. Nimueh’s hand rests briefly on Morgana’s hair. Morgana turns towards her and laughs and laughs.

\--

“You are too kind to me,” she says to Ruth.

Ruth laughs. “Too kind by half.”

“A quarter,” says Morgana, pretending to consider.

The laugh dissipates. “It might be that I find you worthy of kindness.”

“But maybe not?”

“Maybe not,” Ruth agrees.

\--

“In my age and infirmity,” says Nimueh. “I have learned to make the most of every moment, and I assure you, I could be doing other things right now.”

“How dare you,” says Morgana with her teeth, buzzingly against Nimueh’s stomach. “How fucking dare.” She feels Nimueh’s body tremble in amusement and move up against her.

\--

She goes out to collect herbs and wanders gently from the path. She is hardly startled when shapes begin to form around her.

“My friends,” she says to the tree-spirits. She breathes in their smell, the woody smell of loam and the earth. She feels her feet upon the ground, her shadow upon the ground.

“Have you come to make amends?” they rumble.

She blinks, startled now.

 _No_ , she thinks.

“Yes,” she says.

\--

She is not calling to it now, but she can feel the magic under the earth, under the waves, shifting and she knows that she might call it up in a moment. The sun discolours the edges of her vision as she returns to the island, as she turns her heart.


End file.
